The Bottom of the Jar is an exploration of Laabi’s childhood in his native city of Fez – a journey undertaken through the eyes of Namoussa, the narrator, who serves as Laabi’s semi-fictional alter ego. Yet the novel is not only a personal testament of Laabi’s early years, but is a work of great social […]
This is a follow-on volume to the author’s highly successful “Baghdad, Yesterday” (Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2007), which told of Sasson Somekh’s boyhood in the city of his birth and the circumstances under which his family decided to forsake Iraq, a land in which they were rooted for centuries, and move to Israel. It was highly […]
Johnny West has lived in this area for the past decade and speaks fluent Arabic, and so has the skills and ability to talk to everyone from security guards to revolutionaries, from families of protestors, some of whom have been killed, to oil workers, to cafe owners, lawyers, barbers and clerics. Travelling on public buses, […]
It was while Daphne (Dee) Parish was working in a Baghdad hospital in 1989 that she was arrested by the Iraqi police and accused of spying. Dee’s crime was that she had spent a day in the country, with a friend, “Oberserver” journalist Farzad Bazoft, and they had stopped by an air base where there […]
Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to […]
Summoned by his dying mother, Palestinian-born Aziz Shihab returns to the homeland he and his family fled as refugees decades earlier: to a Palestine reclaimed by Israelis and to a country no longer that of his youth in a nation whose estate has been challenged by history. This gripping book chronicles that month-long journey. Part […]
Suheil Bushrui is internationally recognized as the foremost international authority on Kahlil Gibran. He is currently Director of the University of Maryland Kahlil Gibran Research and Studies Project.Joe Jenkins represents a new generation of Gibran scholars and is currently a Research Fellow at the Kahlil Gibran Research and Studies Project.
A personal journal of living under siege in Palestine. Battered by repeated suicide bombs, the Israeli army invaded Palestine in April 2002 and held many of the principle towns, including Ramallah under siege. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh’s road; there were Israeli soldiers on the roof tops of the neighbouring block […]
Badly in need of a new start in life, Phyllis answered an advertisement: English Governess wanted for Prince and Princesses of Saudi Arabian Royal Family. She soon found herself whisked off to the desert to look after – in The King and I tradition – the children of HRH Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz al […]
Malika Oufkir has been a prisoner for most of her life. Born in 1953, the eldest daughter of the King of Morocco’s closest aide, Malika was adopted by the king to be a companion to his little daughter. She grew up at the royal court of Rabat, locked away in a golden cage, among the […]